Lonely Planet launches web site for travellers' videos

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 03 April 2007 03:05

Your IT - Home IT

Lonely Planet has launched a travel-related web site featuring a combination of user-generated travel videos and original programming from Lonely Planet TV.

Sohail Dahdal, manager of LonelyPlanet.tv, said: "The idea was to create a place where travellers could share their own videos from their DV cams or cellphones and share real travel experiences with other travellers, as well as commenting, rating and interacting in a variety of ways with both professional and user generated content."

Lonely Planet t is using Reality Digital Opus, a digital media hosting platform that allows for the upload, transcode and distribution of both professional and consumer generated media. The platform manages and plays back in multiple formats, and includes a set of end-user functions as well as site administration, monitoring and reporting tools. According to Reality Digital, Lonely Planet chose it after conducting a competitive review of social networking and user-generated content (UGC) solutions.

"Reality Digital's video hosting platform appealed to us because of its easy-to-use uploading functionalities, which enabled users to upload videos from files, webcams or mobile phones in a matter of seconds," said Laurence Billiet, head of television for Lonely Planet. "We wanted to have a great site, and we needed it fast. Reality Digital was able to customise the platform in a matter of weeks."